I had a Kaiser appointment today at a quarter past eleven. Far from an ideal time, but I made the appointment on Monday, and it was the first available time before October. I've been needing to talk to my doctor about my horomone dosage, and my attempt to contact him via the website didn't work, so I leapt at the chance to not wait a amonth. I didn't see much point in going all the way to work and then turning around to go to Kaiser, so I slept in a little at home. Made up for the collective eight hours of sleep I'd gotten over the past two nights. Mid-monring buses are notoriously sluggish things, and the 18 always takes forever, so I managed to arrive late to the appointment. I don't think they noticed.

Since my body has always responded well to hormones, my doctor is increasing my estradiol dose, in hopes of (among other things) spurring further breast growth. (Yep, back to that.) He's an odd bird, my doctor. Sometimes I think he has the hots for me. Might explain the hug. If he does, I don't mind. Lord knows I've had enough doctors not give a shit about me, so I might as well work it to my advantage.

He entered a new prescription into the system, which in theory should have been ready for me by the time I made it to the pharmacy downstairs. Of course, it was not. My name finally appeared on the electronic board ten minutes later, and after standing in line for another five (and getting cruised by a very creepy lady standing behind me in line, commenting that she'd love to see me in a mini-skirt or Daisy Dukes, and talking about wanting to go to Baker Beach), I then had to wait for a friggin' consult. Yeah, sure. I've been doing this for eight years now, but sure, because I'm taking a bit more than usual, I need to be told all over again.

It was a quarter to one when I finally escaped Kaiser. Ever try to get from Geary and Divisadero to Third and Townsend on foot? It ain't easy. While waiting for the 2 Clement (don't even say the words "38 Geary" around me), I managed to score a cab. Though I was already extraordinarily late for work, I had the driver take me to Civic Center, as I had to pay my water bill. I'm surprised we made it there in one piece, since at every traffic light (and not just then), the driver played Solitaire on his iPod. Man, what is it with technology that we keep coming back to friggin' Solitaire? If you're going to get into a traffic accident because you're playing video games, at least make it Tetris or something.

When I strolled into the office around two, nobody said a word. Officer Dave knew I was going to be late, and no one else really cared. I stayed until half past six, but no one really cared about that, either. Not a bad deal at all.

What the hell is the deal with boys and poop, though? There were only three boys auditioning, but two of them kept coming back around to poop and ass references. I understand grasping at straws, and lord knows there ain't a huge variety of tricks in my bag, but it seemed like a default: well, things coming out of my ass are funny, and shit in particular is hilarious, so why not? I just don't get boys sometimes.

Though it's an Oakland theater company which occasionally auditions and performs in San Francisco, they revealed tonight that this current spate of auditions is for a new San Francisco-based troupe. While that would obviously be more convenient for me since it wouldn't involve crossing a bridge for rehearsal or shows, going to Oakland also means spending the night at Vash's, and that's always a good thing.

I should hear back yay or nay next week. If I get in, swell. If not, that's okay, too.

Eight years ago today, in the long-forgotten era known as 1998, I started on hormones. On this same day three years later, a week after The Great Overshadowing, I received my two-week notice from CNET. After being given the news by the new exec whom I'm fairly certain was hired for the sole purpose of laying people off (gotta pay the rent somehow), I returned to my office and cried. I called Maddy, who was in the old building on Chestnut, and we both left work early. Sushi and Ghost World at the AMC Kabuki were our comfort splurges. Her supervisor was (and probably still is) a dickweed, so of course she got in trouble for it.

The head of IS, he was a self-loathing fag who never liked me, so much so that when Maddy interviewed for the position as IS admin she was warned by a friend in the department not to mention that she was my girlfriend since it would surely be held against her. In addition to the fact that I was a gender-blurring tranny who threatened his own precarious sense of masculinity, he also got grumpy at me once because I ragged on Outlook on a company mailing list, to the extent that he actually paid me a visit in my cubicle to ask why I was saying such horrible things. Ah, my brash, rebellious youth. At least today my hair is in pigtails and I'm wearing entirely too much makeup. I've still got something, damnit.

9/14/06
11:47pm
Sitting on a couch in the fenced-in area of the Power Exchange. I'm specifically sitting in a Homedics massage chair with a Homedics neck massager thingy going as well. (Yay Walgreens!) Slow night. Sparse if constant stream of tourists walking by, but not much action. The music is a bit more palatable to met han some other nights, a quote-modern rock-unquote mix which includes Nine Inch Nails. Don't know if I'm going to do anything or not. No expectations. I'm mainly here because, though this was the only night of the week I didn't have anything planned, staying in sounded depressing. (Vash is out on a date tonight, and even if she wasn't, I do believe that one of the reasons we're still going strong is that we don't spend every waking moment together. I know all too well what familiarity breeds.) As always, it raised the question of where to go. I kinda wanted to be among friends, or at least people I know well enough to hang out with and talk to, and on a Thursday night that means the PE. Beats nowhere at all. (I think. I could be wrong.) Jerry Cornelius is here. Whether or not he recognizes me, I can't say.

Someone compared me to Daryl Hannah in Blade Runner. My hair was still up in pigtails and I'd reapplied my powder and eyeliner before leaving the house, but my overall look was still quite subtle, certainly nowhere near as Pris-like as it had been for the holiday video shoot last year. But I took it as a compliment all the same, and not a bad sign. I've still got something.

I have to admit, the place is growing on me. I was struck that night by the power, the utter brilliance of being able to play somewhere and indulge in fantasy, and have it be funded by someone else entirely. Considering that the primary tradeoff is that they're present, it's not so bad. The fifteen bucks those straight men pay on Thursday nights (seventy-five bucks on the weekend, or thirty-five in a towel) allow a place to exist where an elderly cross-dresser can go and be themself. On the street, at least beyond the block on which the club is located), some of those guys look as though they'd be likely to beat the shit out of a man with a white beard wearing a teddy, fishnets and a rose choker. In this context, if they have anything to say they keep it themselves, their self-defending machismo and masculinity effectively neutered. And all this just on the off chance of seeing some live fucking. It borders on a scam, and I Iove it.

An argument could be made that It occurs to me that it could also be seen as a fishbowl effect—come see the freaks in their natural habitat!—but I don't think so, considering that most of the guys seem to make a point of not gawking, and what's more, I'd like to think I know the difference between a gawk and a leer. Once again, I could be wrong.

Aside from experimenting a bit with a handheld massager (which glowed green when activating, making it seem all the more like an alien probe), I didn't play at all. Flirted a little with one of the relatively few other transsexuals I've seen there (as opposed to transvestites or crossdressers), but I don't expect anything to come of that, nor am I entirely sure I want it to. The evening was mostly about chilling (as the kids like to say) and getting to bed really late.

Vash and I had planned on doing some gallery-hopping on Friday night, but she was tired from her own late and considerably more strenuous night, so after she got off work around three she went straight to the Black Light District and napped with Perdita. I got home at half past six as she was waking up. Some processing occurred, especially as there was physical evidence from her quite successful date. Abandonment issues that I didn't realize I had were triggered, and it was the first time I've cried in front of her. Considering we've been together for a year, I'm not sure if that's good or bad. It just is, I suppose.

Vash is not going to leave me; she acted consensually and within the established parameters of our relationship; she doesn't love me any less than she did the night before, just like my love and dedication to her did not diminish when I started seeing Ryder—which was very difficult for her to take. Ay, there's the rub. I am not unaware of the parallels, that I'm feeling now the way she did then, nor of the many ways I can be seen as a hypocrite. After all, what right do I have to feel hurt when I did the same to her (inasmuch as either of us "did" anything to the other), and first, and as much more of a bombshell?

I know that in assorted quarters I'm still a bad person for having broke up with Maddy and Collette last year, and I imagine there would be some gloating if Vash did leave me. Getting what I deserve, taste of my own medicine, et cetera. (Their slates are clean, right? Sure they are.) (And, for the record, I don't think Maddy would be among the gloaters.)

The tough part has been allowing myself to feel whatever it is I need to feel, to let the pain run its course, to accept and own it in spite of all the ways I can convince myself that it's a punishment I brought on myself for all the terrible things I've done and unnecessarily prolong the suffering.

If I may indulge in sheer understatement, non-monogamy is a tricky thing. Then again, so is transitioning from one gender to the other. After so many years of the latter (don't I have an anniversary coming up?), it still has its share of pitfalls and traumas, some deeper than others. It's never been easy, but it's always been the right thing for me, and so is this.

11:36pm

I think you know I'll be okay.

Went on a date last night. Not a Craigslist hookup this time, but a girl I've know for a while through the spoken word scene. Really nice, devastatingly intelligent, but there just wasn't the spark. Nobody's fault, that. Sometimes it happens, sometimes it doesn't. (Occasionally I wonder when Ryder will be back in town, then I realize that for all I know she is back in town and just hasn't called, at which point I try to put the entire subject out of my mind.) Ironically, we spent a lot of the time talking about Vash (whom she knows and likes), how her and I met, that sort of thing.

It's a story which takes on a certain immediate poignancy these days, as this is our anniversary month. Though our first date was on September 22, 2005, I tend to think of September 15 as being the day things really started getting rolling. I still remember seeing Vash across the crowded art reception (which I was attending entirely at Ali's request) and immediately gravitating towards her. I spent most of my time at the gallery talking to her—not monopolizing her time, mind you, as I was conscious of the fact that she was the curator of the event and was technically on the clock—but I kept expecting her to drift away or make an excuse to detach from me. It didn't happen.

We'd been sort of in each others' orbit for ever since I'd performed at another event she curated that June. She'd attended QOM and Retool since then, and there'd been some quasi-flirting in email, but it wasn't until we were really hanging out for a while in person at Studio Z that night that I was determined that we would exchange numbers, I would call her, and wewould go on a date. (Although I'd been seeing Collette steadily for a while, I'd done little actual dating up to that point. Haven't done much since then, either, though it doesn't feel like as much of a lack in my life as it once did.) And, amazingly, she seemed enthusiastic about the idea.

Twelve months later, I'm still thrilled and a little bit unbelieving that she likes me and wants to be with me. Cycling through all the major holidays and birthdays and seasons and two (2!) trips to Fresno, and I still miss her when she's gone, I get happy when I see her and get sad when she leaves, consoling myself with the thought that I'll be seeing her again, sooner rather than later. Such simple things, perhaps, but after breaking up with Maddy, I was not expecting to feel that way in the foreseeable future. The rot has usually set in by this point, and I can feel it. Not this time. No one is forever (tm c0g), and we may not have the same up-all-night sloppy-drunk teenager energy as we had when we started out, but it renaubs exciting and fulfilling and never boring and goddamned if her smile doesn't make me melt every time and that body is as delicious now as it was before Ali's visa expired (perhaps even moreso when you factor in the recent nicodetox). Not bad for a trip around the sun, not at all, and there are more revolutions to come.

sometime after midnight

at first, when you were sitting on the couch not talking to anyone, i thought you were fish.

The guy had two cats, both of whom spent some time on my lap. I like cats, and cats like me.

3:54pm

Vash and I were in the office of the auto shop on Saturday, waiting for her car to be finished. There was a computer with internet access, and we both had reading/writing/drawing supplies, as well as the ability to keep each other company. One of the mechanics steps in, says i'll turn on the television for you and procedes to reach up to a teevee we hadn't even noticed above the door. We both said that no, really, we're fine, we don't want the teeevee on. With a confused look on his face, as though he was a post-Return of the Living Dead zombie not understanding why someone would turn down an offer of fresh brains, he turned it on and said well, there's a remote on the counter if you want to turn it off. And indeed there was, but instead, I got out my trusty TV-B-Gone. More satisfying that way, like using a phaser. Zap! Hasta, dumb stupid unsolicited teevee.

Earlier that day, we ate at Saul's Restaurant and Delicatessen in Berkeley. Vash says it has a certain comforting familiarity, reminding her of the delis she ate at when she was younger. (I didn't have to have a Jewish girlfriend to start going to Jewish delis, but it helped.) There was no teevee at all.

The Kronos Quartet show last night was great. I was mildly disappointed to discover that neither the hot blonde chick nor the hot brunette chick is with them anymore, but such is life. (Fun fact: I'm the primary webmonkey for the hot brunette chick's page. Tiny world and all.) Though a 9/11-themed show, there was very little overtly referencing The Great Overshadowing, especially if you took the performances at face value and didn't read the program. The closest one might get would be a series of pieces which included recordings of very young children who witnessed the attacks, but their voices were looped and edited and so thoroughly repurposed that most of the time it was impossible to tell just what was being said. I liekd that. There was none of the typical American sledgehammer-to-the-forehead sentiment which I found so distasteful at the time, not to mention before and after. Indeed, I don't believe I would have gone to the show in the first place if I'd had any reason to believe there would be patriotic or jingoism elements. I cannot fucking abide it. Thankfully, the description of the show mentioned Iraqi music, as well as pieces by Terry Riley and Einsturzende Neubauten—no goddamned Lee Greenwood or the like.

See, when the towers fell, I was not in tears, nor did I feel all that angry. I was numb to the scope of the human tragedy itself, as most people are to the thousands of people who die violently every day. From pretty much the moment I heard about it, my main thought was oh, hell, it's going to be the gulf war all over again, and I wasn't wrong. The fascism of enforced patriotism, of self-righteous yahoos waving the their flags and pointing accusatory fingers at those of us who do not, even though those flag-wavers don't bother to partcipate in the democracy they claim to love. I refuse to wave a flag, any flag, but at least I vote. In any event, the hurricanes last year affected me more than The Great Overshadowing ever did, and I'm still deeply troubled by what happened in the Superdome. I guess that means I hate America.

Vash and I are going to see The Kronos Quartet tonight. Membership has its privileges.